W. B. Godbey - Enter His Rest

elucidation of His mighty works should be substantially committed to memory.
You should add to these “Demonology,” which will post you on the devil's side of the battlefield. A war history
which does not describe both sides is radically deficient. You cannot successfully study the mighty works of the
Holy Ghost and leave out those of Satan, His inveterate foe. As Christian soldiers, it is utterly impossible for
you to prove a success without the grand panoply of these nine gifts, which the Holy Ghost freely bestows on
every true warrior in Immanuel's army. While a classical education, when utilized by the Holy Ghost, is a
powerful auxiliary, it is in no way essential to real efficiency. Regardless of the amount of learning possessed by
any person, these gifts really solve the problem of soul saying efficiency, if the holiness people would duly
appreciate and utilize these gifts, they would all be successful preachers of the glorious Gospel, for which the
millions are perishing. Human learning has much to do with ecclesiastical position and when fully consecrated
to God and used by the Holy Ghost it truly augments our efficiency for good. But from the simple fact that the
people who have it are apt to depend on it, we often realize an actual detraction, rather than augmentation, of the
normal efficiency. Before I received a collegiate education I do believe my preaching to the slaves was more
evangelical than after I graduated in college, till God, in His great mercy, sanctified me and gave me the Holy
Ghost, thirty-eight years ago. Before that notable epoch, in 1868, I preached by the power of my intellect and
education, using them as vain substitutes for the Holy Ghost. Since that happy experience I have preached “with
the Holy Ghost sent down from Heaven,” I Peter 1:12, which, of course, I could not do before I received Him.
While we exhort you to avail yourselves of all the gifts of the Holy Ghost, pursuant to the positive mandate of
God, Eph. 6:1, “Put on the whole armour of God that you may be enabled to stand against the methods of the
devil,” we would not minify a single one of these immortal nine. As this section is on Divine Healing, I give you
a few concluding remarks. Do not fight the doctors, as we need them in three ways, diagnostically, I. e., to tell
us what is the matter with the patient; mechanically, I. e., to set and bandage broken limbs, and do other things
which they alone understand, and hygienically, I. e., to tell us how to live conservatively of the laws
appertaining to health. I have consulted the ablest physicians of the age in reference to their claim to heal the
sick and they have uniformly told me they have made no such claim, but were only humble helpers of nature,
recognizing with me that God alone can heal the sick.
Fighting the doctors instead of diseases is like fighting churches instead of devils. While we must be true to God
and holiness, church or no church, we have no time to fight the churches, because we have all we can do to
preach the Gospel and get souls saved. Satan is very anxious to get the holiness people to fight the churches so
that he can effectually obstruct their access to those people, whereas God has sent us to all. Therefore we should
be all things to all men, like Paul, that we may save some. If you will be content to do nothing but the work
which God has given you, with a full heart flooded with divine love, preach the Gospel with the Holy Ghost sent
down from Heaven, sparing sin nowhere, but thundering against it like a messenger from Heaven; having no
time to fight anything but sin and devils; constantly discriminating widely between sin and sinners, doing your
utmost to destroy the former and save the latter, I will go your security that you will find more open doors in
churches and elsewhere than you know what to do with. This war on churches is the trickery of Satan to turn
your efforts away from him and to make you fire on something else. God has sent us to save the church people
as well as outsiders. All the while you hate sin with all your power of soul, mind and spirit, so you will die in
your tracks before you will make the slightest compromise with it, whether in church or out, you love sinners
with the everlasting love which brought Jesus down from Heaven to die for them. Therefore you are constantly
ready for martyrdom.
PERILS
In my youth, a very vicious man drew a gun on me, pointing it so that if it fired it must hit me, as he was very
near. He pulled the trigger and endeavored to shoot, but signally failed to do anything but to make it snap. To
my knowledge the gun had fired all right but a few minutes previously. Of course I believe God put His hand on
that dangerous fire-arm so my enemy could not kill me. As I was always an uncompromising whiskey fighter,
running it out of the circuit which the Conference gave me, saloonkeepers often threatened my life on different
occasions, actually looking me in the face with terrible oaths and threatening to shoot me if I did not desist from
my efforts to arouse all the people to destroy their business. I never in my life loaded a fire-arm nor carried one.